Corel releases beta of WordPerfect Lightning

Corel plans on Tuesday to formally unveil a public beta of its WordPerfect Lightning productivity suite, designed to serve as a key component to its online-services model.

WordPerfect Lightning beta, a free, downloadable word-processing and note-taking software application, aims to provide a new distribution and online-services model for Corel WordPerfect Office.

The WordPerfect Lightning beta builds on Corel's earlier efforts to create applications such as its modular components that are designed to work in an online environment while remaining on the desktop.

Like the modular components, WordPerfect Lightning aims to offer a tightly integrated productivity platform comprised of both online and offline components. The productivity suite offers free access to online services such as collaboration and data storage.

"By blending desktop and Web applications in WordPerfect Lightning, Corel is taking a truly hybrid approach to computing," Richard Carriere, Corel's general manager of office productivity, said in a statement.

The software features four components: Navigator, the Viewer, Lightning Notes window and Connector.

Navigator serves as a central repository for organizing content, while the Viewer acts as a reading tool to view such documents in Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, or WordPerfect file formats. Lightning Notes is designed as a lightweight word processor and note-taking utility. And Connector, which is powered by Joyent, is a suite of Web-based applications such as e-mail, calendars and address books.

[System Tyrant]

Tried it out and...

it's kind of cool. I haven't figured out how it would be useful to me yet, but I'll keep messing around with it.